Procedural.com has finally released their new urban environment procedural modeling software CityEngine. From what I understand the software will allow the used to define a vocabulary of construction elements (windows, doors, streets, buildings, cities, materials, etc.) and “build” designs by way of a computer automated process, according to a given set of instructions.

When I first float this concept with most architects, their immediate response is “Nobody wants buildings designed by a computer”. True, the most obvious application for this technology is not real architecture, but that in movie making (like the 1930’s Manhattan in King Kong - it would have taken 3D artists an impossible amount of time to construct each individual building) an for that, this software is perfect. But what about our built environment, does procedural modeling have a place? On a very basic level, I would argue that architects had better be the first to embrace this technology, otherwise it will be the developers and the builders who take hold and see it as a way to help marginalize the role of our profession.

That’s a practical reason, but in reality, the software is more a reflection of what we do than an antithesis of it. With projects, we take a given design vocabulary (either dictated by the location, the client or the architect), and process that through a set of instructions (the program, the model codes, accessibility, etc.) to achieve a given design. I don’t see procedural modeling as a means to an end, but I do see it as a valuable tool in our arsenal, a way to cut through the tedium and expedite the analysis of complex scenarios. To that end, this software as promise, but at a price tag of nearly $7,000 I think it is going to be out of the range for most architecture firms to embrace, because this aspect of the design process is neither a core essential (like needing CAD) or a sufficient crowd pleaser (as in how 3D rendering softwares are used to “sell the dream”).

However, they do offer a 30-Day Trial and I’m eager to give it a go.

Apparently I’m not the only one who has problems squeezing fire dept. requirements into the aesthetics of a building. Quite the place for a Siamese connection. At least the red caps work with the color scheme.

Image via Metropolis Magazine.

ACM Siggraph (Special Interest Group Graphics) is a division of the ACM whose “mission is to promote the generation and dissemination of information on computer graphics and interactive techniques.” Their yearly conference is an engaging synthesis of special effects, game design, architecture, education, web design…anything that involves graphics and the user experience. This year they’ve broken with their traditional organizational method for the conference and it appears they’ve broadened their scope to include an even greater degree of diversity of disciplines.

The conference has begun listing the programmed events, and digital design and architecture is featured more prominently that I’ve ever seen it. Specifically their Design and Computation section has programs including A Landscape of 3D Printed Skyscrapers (with works by Foster+Partners, SOM, SHoP, Morphosis and many others), Parametric Urbanism, Procedural Complexity (which will be presented by Zaha Hadid Architects), Weaving Public and Private: Interior Wall Studies (SOM), Phare Tower (Morphosis), Nanjing South Station (KPF), and many others.

It’s very relevant to see how the architecture profession has taken hold of technology and utilized it in ways that other fields have yet to exploit. I’m glad to see Siggraph taking advantage of this.

“The goal of my project is to create organic shapechanging art forms and figures whose 3D form, surface structure, and color change dramatically and lively as if to reflect echoes of environmental music, light, and human communication.” - Sachiko Kodama, June Issue of Communications Magazine.

You can view her online portfolio here.

The last issue of SEED Magazine had a very interesting dialogue between Paola Antonelli (senior curator of Architecture and Design at The MoMA) and Benoit Mandelbrot (godfather of fractal geometry) centering on the subject of architecture and innovation. You can read the full text of the interview here. I particularly enjoyed the parlay they entreated concerning modern architecture:

“BM: Well, a paper I wrote, and that was widely quoted, concerned fractals and architecture. It was in a certain sense a critique of the Bauhaus.A very short paper, but very influential.

BM: Well, modern architecture had two reasons to exist. One is the desire, on the part of architects, to be different. And the other is the desire, on the part of the builders, to be cheap. Look at modern architecture in early manifestations, for example, in Russian building designs shortly after the revolution—many of which were never actually built, for lack of funding. They were very conscious of the fact that this was not something beautiful.”

You can view a short video of their correspondence here:

Paola Antonelli just organized the exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind at the MoMA (mentioned previoulsy) which focuses on advances in technology and design. You can order a copy of the exhibition program here. KCRW’s Design and Architecture radio show did an interesting segment with Paola which you can download here:

“Based on new technologies for adaptive building skins, Emergent Surface is a wall that continuously reconfigures itself–portions selectively disappearing and reappearing. In one condition, the piece appears as a solid surface with three-dimensional curvature. In another, it resolves itself into seven slender poles, running floor to ceiling. And between these extremes lie an infinite variety of configurations…” more…

Image and text via the Hoberman Website which you can view here.

The installation is part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit currently going on at the MoMA.

Click here to listen to an interview with Hoberman concerning the installation.

“High-rise towers rarely develop the verticality of spaces they create, remaining instead only iconic objects in the urban landscape. Their interiors consist of stacked-up floor plates, maximizing leasable or usable floor area, and in urban centers where groupings of towers crowd together on the most expensive land, the spaces between the towers are ignored. No doubt, these conditions result from the single-minded interests of commercial developers and the isolation enforced by private property ownership. The potential remains, regardless of the limitations of current attitudes, to invest the latent and actual verticality of towers with new programs of habitation that expand the meaning and experience of urban tower space. This was the aim of the sixth semester design studio in the Graduate School of Architecture at Pratt Institute this past semester…” more…

Via Lebbeus Woods’ blog which you ca view here.

“Factories have often had to fight to be seen as architecture. Perhaps because architecture is so often about a spectacle that transports out of everyday life - the palace, the cathedral - how can the place you go to work every day be an object for aesthetic admiration? Perhaps with their conversion into a new space for the contemplation of art, or for ‘loft living’ they might become acceptable, but what of those factories that are still churning out production? Surely they should just do their jobs quietly and out of sight and then be abandoned when no longer of use?”

This is a great post. From Sit Down Man, You’re a Bloody Tragedy.

“[The Architects] designed the buildings in the character of early 20th-century commercial buildings, with brick facades and red-brick paving on the streets and walkways.” via Dallas Morning News.

There are some days when I really hate architecture.

Here are some more adorable examples of North Texas’ love for early century romanticism and other eclectic vulgarities: